A year ago today I took this smiley girl to her cardiologist for a "routine" echocardiogram. We had been to many echo appointments before and many since but at this appointment we were immediately admitted to Phoenix Children's Hospital because the echo showed that Stella had stenosis in her pulmonary veins and she was going into right heart failure. We had plans to leave a few days after her "routine" appointment to travel to Coronado Island to enjoy a vacation with my family, we had no idea that we would not be coming home from the hospital for over 2 months and we were about to encounter the worst medical roller coaster ever. It is a miracle that Stella was able to come home with us and it is by the grace of God that she is continuing to do so well since we have been home. The odds were against us when we had to make the decision to put Stella on the ECMO machine and to endure a second open heart surgery. The odds were even against us as we took our daughter home because her chances of having pulmonary vein stenosis again were very high.
The echos that we have had since we were discharged from the hospital have continued to get better each time and we have no reason to think that her upcoming echo should not be even better than her last one in March. However, it is a little unnerving that her echo this Thursday is almost exactly one year from the echo that admitted us and I pray that there are no surprises. Once we get the great results from her echo on Thursday we will be leaving on July 1st to enjoy the Coronado vacation with my family that we missed out on last year.
What a great display of faithfulness, Cara! God's hand has been on Stella and in her miraculous progress over the past year. It's been an amazing testament of His faithfulness. Praising God with you and looking forward to some fun photos from Coronado!
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